Re: [apps-discuss] Updating the status of SPF

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 10:00:48AM -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> 
> It's in wide scale use.  The goal of the current effort is to document that 
> use. 

I don't know why a WG is necessary for that.  There are three
possibilities here.

One is that SPF as specified is in wide scale use, in which case there
is no real protocol work that is needed.  All that is needed is a
report (maybe as an RFC) saying, "This thing was widely deployed.  The
experiment worked."

If, however, the experiment did not work, or bits and pieces of the
RFC are not actually implemented or are implemented differently or are
implemented diffrently by different people, then the new effort can do
one of two things.  One is to move the experimental protocol to the
standards track.  But that automatically requires that one make some
determination about which pieces are going to change, and as Dave
Crocker said somewhere in this thread that is going to attract all
manner of disagreements.  The other is simply to document exactly what
is out there and how things do and do not deviate from the
experimental protocol.  The latter is surely an exercise in research
that delivers an informational document but does not move the protocol
onto the standards track.

In my view, if the goal is to move the protocol to the standards
track, then addressing issues in the protocol as already documented
(and as actually deployed) has to be an open possibility.  If that's
not the goal, then I have no objection.  I don't see what the value
would be in moving something to the standards track without being
willing to undertake standards work on it.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]